


Don't Leave Me

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [60]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan is in hospital following a serious accident on an anomaly call-out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Leave Me

Stephen stared around him at the clinical white-painted walls and resumed his pacing, feeling liked a caged animal.

He hated hospitals.

He hated the smell of them, the feel of them and even the sound of them, where footsteps seemed to echo in endless corridors and he was never sure which was more ominous, the sound of machines constantly bleeping, or their silence.

He’d been here for two days and nights: two endless days and nights in which he hadn’t known – and still didn’t know – whether his lover would ever wake up again.

The doctors had talked, he’d listened to them intently, and then promptly forgotten everything they’d said, consumed by an all-encompassing darkness filled with the possibility that Ryan, his lover and his best-friend, might actually die.

It had been one of those stupid, unavoidable accidents, which had replayed itself over and over in his mind, taunting him with the fact that there was no way to wind back time, or at least none that they’d yet found. They’d been shepherding a herd of Edmontosaurus back towards an anomaly. The creatures were large and slightly skittish, but they’d got all but the last four through when a dog had come dashing out of the woods, barking loudly, darting at the duckbilled dinosaurs and spooking them. They’d scattered without warning, moving too quickly for anyone to avoid. Abby had been knocked to the ground and Ryan had been propelled backwards by one powerful hind foot. His head had connected hard with a concrete post and he’d slumped down, unconscious.

Stephen had managed to jump clear and he hadn’t even seen Ryan fall. He’d only realised the soldier was down when he’d heard Cutter yelling for Ditzy as they’d herded the last of the frightened herbivores back to their own time. He’d turned around, adrenaline coursing through his system from the sudden chaos, and seen the medic kneeling on the ground next to a black-uniformed figure: a black-uniformed figure with blood streaking his short blond hair.

A hand touched his shoulder lightly and brought his pacing to an abrupt halt. Stephen turned to face Nick Cutter, his heart hammering uncomfortably in his chest.

“Ditzy is talking to the doctors, but I thought you’d want to know that Amanda and Greg are here with Vicky,” Cutter said in the sort of quiet voice that people always seemed to use in hospitals.

Stephen nodded, and a moment later the door opened to admit Ryan’s ex-wife, her husband and the daughter who Ryan had never ceased loving even through the years when his wife had denied him any part in her life. That animosity was in the past now, finally swept aside by the terror of believing that the child they both loved might have been lost forever through an anomaly.

Amanda’s face, devoid of make-up, was pale and drawn, and Vicky’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. Ryan’s daughter, who had turned twelve on her last birthday, threw herself into Stephen’s arms and hugged him fiercely. He returned the hug, trying to raise a smile. Amanda hugged him around her daughter and pressed a kiss onto his cheek. Her husband, Greg, a quiet man who Stephen both liked and respected, shook Stephen’s hand firmly and asked, “Has there been any change?”

Stephen shook his head. “They say he’s stable. They just don’t know when he’ll wake up.”

Vicky stared up at him out of clear blue eyes. “I want to see him, Stephen. I want to see my Daddy.”

He stroked her fine blonde hair and nodded. “You can see him as soon as the doctors let us back in, sweetheart. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s just got a bandage around his head … and you’ll have to ignore the tubes and stuff. Pretend they’re not there.”

She held his hand tightly and nodded, swallowing to hold back her tears.

Stephen heard footsteps approaching again down the corridor, and his heart did its usual back-flip. Second Lieutenant Dave Owen, better known as Ditzy, Ryan’s team medic and his close friend, produced one of his reassuring smiles and said quickly, “There’s been no change, but Dr Yogasundrum’s happy with all the test results. The CT scan’s shown that the swelling in his brain has started to reduce naturally, which is good and all the blood tests are fine.”

Stephen was horribly conscious of the tears pricking relentlessly at his eyes and was glad of the distraction when Ditzy smiled down at Vicky and said, “Hello, Trouble. Come to check up on your Daddy?” He hoisted her up in his arms for a hug, pointed out that she was nearly too big to be picked up and then said, “How about you and Uncle Nick going to get us all some coffee and chocolate from a machine down the corridor? Then maybe you can do a better job than I have of persuading Stephen to eat something.”

“Then can I see Daddy?” she demanded. The penetrating look in her eyes made it perfectly clear that she knew this was a ploy to give the adults the chance to talk without her being present.

“Once the doctors have finished, we can all see him. He’s in a room by himself, so we won’t be disturbing anyone else. And I promise you I’m not going to say anything now that I don’t want you to hear.”

“Promise?” The look she gave him reminded Stephen of the way Ryan was capable of grilling any subordinate unfortunate enough to incur his wrath.

“Promise, Trouble. Would I lie to you?”

She heaved a theatrical sigh and said, “Yes, but I’ll kick your shins if I ever find out.”

He ruffled her hair and sent her off with Cutter.

Stephen felt a small smile forming, the first unforced one since Ryan had been injured. Nick Cutter had a tendency to regard children as a dangerous life form, and Vicky Thornton had a disconcerting maturity at times, which she would no doubt be putting to good effect, grilling her companion on the details of Ryan’s coma.

Ditzy kissed Amanda, shook hands with Greg then pulled Stephen into a hug. “I’m telling you the truth, mate,” the medic said firmly. “All the test results are good. They’ll be finished in about ten minutes or so then we can go in. There’s a family room free, so Amanda, Greg and Vicky can stay here as well. We’ll sit with him in shifts, but you are getting some sleep, whether you like it or not, even if I have to bloody well tie you to a bed. OK?”

Stephen summoned another shaky smile. “OK, Ditz, but no bondage.”

It took slightly longer than ten minutes, but his minders employed the time to good effect, making sure that Stephen drunk a large coffee, ate a singularly tasteless ham and tomato sandwich and followed it with a king-sized Mars bar. Vicky watched approvingly, munching on her own chocolate, but neither of them took their eyes off the door for long.

Dr Yogasundrum, a tall, thin Sri Lankan, arrived after half an hour and greeted everyone in the room with a smile. “Captain Ryan is doing well,” he said, without wasting time on introductions. “All the test results are good. He is stable and breathing by himself. There is evidence of some response to external stimuli and also some eye movement. That’s all positive. Sit with him, talk to him, tell him you love him.”

Stephen nodded, swallowing heavily. He wanted to ask how long Ryan might be like this. He knew he’d asked the same question before, but he couldn’t seem to hold any of the answers in her head. He opened his mouth, then shut it again without speaking.

“I can’t tell you how long it might take for him to wake up, Stephen,” the doctor said, answering the unasked question. “It could be hours, it could be days, it could even be weeks. If it’s any help, the majority of people will awaken from a coma in no more than a month and the vast majority with head injuries like your partner’s will make a full recovery. The trauma to the brain tissue was relatively slight and has already shown significant improvement.”

Stephen nodded, still barely comprehending the doctor’s words. All he knew was that he loved Ryan more than he’d ever thought it possible to love anyone and the thought of living without him was almost unbearably painful.

Amanda Thornton slipped an arm around his waist. “Come on, Stephen, let’s go and see Tom.”

Ten minutes later, Stephen was sitting on one side of the hospital bed holding one of Ryan’s hands, with Vicky sitting opposite him, clutching the other, and telling Ryan in no uncertain terms that he had better wake up soon, because Stephen was worried.

Amanda and Greg settled themselves down in two relatively comfortable chairs, while Cutter and Ditzy both excused themselves to pass on the news of Ryan’s test results to the rest of the team before Lyle’s patience expired and he arrived in full combat gear.

Stephen held his lover’s hand and watched the regular rise and fall of Ryan’s chest under the white sheet. The soldier’s face was peaceful and unmarked. The only injury had been to the back of his skull where his head had impacted with a concrete post. The doctor said Ryan had been lucky. He’d been knocked unconscious, the skin had been split, and there had been copious amounts of blood, but he’d got away with no more than a hairline fracture and some swelling to the brain tissue.

He wanted to talk to Ryan, to tell him how much he loved him, to beg him not to leave him alone, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. He just held tighter to his hand and tried to force the words he wanted to say out past the lump in his throat. Vicky appeared to be coping better than he was. She’d already embarked on the story of their journey back from holiday in the south of France. How they’d got the news about Ryan’s injury from Lyle, referred to as Uncle Jon, just as they’d arrived at the airport in Nice to discover that their flight home had been cancelled due to a baggage handler’s strike at Heathrow. She then proceeded to describe in detail her step-father’s decision to hire a car and drive through the night to reach Calais and the Channel Tunnel.

After a couple of hours, Amanda stood up and moved behind her daughter, staring down at the still form of her ex-husband. “We’re going to leave you on your own with Stephen for a bit, Tom. We’ll be back soon, once we’ve sampled the delights of the cafeteria.”

As the door closed behind them, tears started to fall unchecked down Stephen’s cheeks. He brought Ryan’s hand up to his lips, pressing a kiss on the scarred knuckles.

“Don’t leave me, Ryan. Don’t you fucking dare leave me.” For a moment he thought he felt Ryan’s fingers twitch in his hand, but there was no change to any of the monitors and no alteration in the rate of his lover’s breathing. He stared at Ryan, willing his eyes to move, willing him to give some sort of sign that he was even aware of Stephen’s presence. His breath hitched in his throat as he finally managed to say the words that had been going around and around in his head for the last two days. “I love you, Ryan. I love you so much it fucking hurts.” Then the tears started to fall unchecked and he was still crying when Amanda, Greg and Vicky came back half an hour later.

None of them said anything, but Vicky pulled up a chair next to his and put her arm around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. A tear drop landed on the back of his hand and he looked into cornflower blue eyes that mirrored his own pain.

“He’s going to be all right, Stephen,” she said. “I phoned Uncle Jon.”

Stephen stared at her in confusion.

“I asked him about his thumbs. He said they weren’t pricking.” Her eyes challenged him to laugh, but all Stephen felt was a sudden, irrational flare of hope.

Lyle’s thumbs. Lyle’s bloody thumbs. The thing they all instinctively relied on to divine whether they were going to have a shit day or not and, nine times out of ten, the bugger was right.

He ran his own thumb over the back of Ryan’s hand, smoothing the skin, then he massaged the palm in the way he knew Ryan liked, rubbing small circles on the warm flesh. Would Lyle lie about something like that just to reassure his best friend’s daughter? To reassure him? To give them a hope that might prove to be false?

Vicky hugged him tightly. “He wouldn’t lie, Stephen. I know he wouldn’t. Daddy’s going to be all right. Mummy and Dad think so too.”

“Jon wouldn’t pull a stunt over something like this, Stephen,” said Amanda softly. “I know it’s crazy, and it can’t have any basis in fact, but …”

“But he’s right more often than he’s wrong,” Stephen finished for her.

Before he had the chance to say anything else, Ryan’s hand moved in his. There was no room for doubt this time. There had definitely been movement. He stared down at his lover, heart hammering in his chest. “Ryan? Tom?”

“I saw it too,” said Greg Thornton, quickly, before stepping out into the main ward, searching for a member of the nursing staff.

One of the nurses hurried into the room, a smile on her face and promptly started to check the readings on the various monitors.

“Nurse, is he waking up?” said Amanda, asking the question that Stephen couldn’t manage to articulate.

“It can be a very gradual process,” said the nurse. “But there are definite signs of more eye movement, which is a very good sign. Keep talking to him. There’s a very good chance that he’ll be able to hear you, even if he doesn’t remember it when he wakes up.”

Stephen squeezed Ryan’s hand. “Come on, Ryan, you can do it.” He felt a slight response from his lover’s fingers, and thought he discerned more eye movement under the closed lids.

The next two hours passed with agonising slowness. Doctors and nurses came and went, shining lights into Ryan’s eyes, even pricking him lightly to test his response to pain; when his hand flinched away on one occasion that drew definite smiles of approval. Ditzy arrived and stood quietly on one side, watching and waiting, occasionally interpreting what was going on for the benefit of Stephen and the others.

Dr Yogasundrum smiled, said he was pleased with Ryan’s progress, and made no attempt to tell Stephen to get some rest. Ditzy forced him to eat another ham and tomato sandwich, prompting Stephen to ask if he’d bought a job lot of the bloody things. Ditzy just laughed and told him he didn’t even want to consider the other varieties available, not unless he wanted to get up close and personal with a culture more ancient than China.

Between them they watched Ryan like hawks, monitored and made a note of every single movement he made, compared notes, and kept talking. Both to him and to each other.

Eventually, four hours after that first, almost imperceptible movement of his fingers, Ryan’s eyelids fluttered and opened just for a moment, but it was enough almost to make Stephen’s heart burst out of his chest with joy.

“Ryan? Tom? Can you hear me?” He clutched Ryan’s hand hard, and felt a small squeeze back. Tears had started running down Stephen’s cheeks again and he didn’t care who saw him cry.

“Daddy!” Vicky was on the other side of the bed now almost bouncing with excitement. “Daddy, I’m here, we’re all here!”

Ryan’s mouth opened slightly, and in a voice barely above a whisper, he croaked, “I hate hospitals.”

Stephen brought his lover’s hand up to his face, kissing his palm and holding his hand tightly. “Tom,” then his voice broke and it was all he could do to continue. “Tom Ryan, you scared me half to bloody death.”

“Must be bad,” whispered Ryan. “Never called me Tom before.”

Stephen laughed, remembering the first time Ryan had ever used his first name, when he’d been suffering from hypothermia in a crevasse in the middle of an Ice Age. First names weren’t something they made a habit of.

He bent down and brushed a light kiss over Ryan’s lips. “Welcome back, darling.”

Ryan smiled slightly, maintained his hold on Stephen’s hand and promptly drifted off to sleep.

Stephen stared around him, desperate for someone to tell him that Ryan was going to be all right, that there would be no lasting damage.

Ditzy gripped his shoulder hard enough to bruise. “It’s looking good, mate, it’s looking bloody good.”

The next couple of hours passed by in a blur. People came and went. More tests were carried out. Everyone said Ryan was doing well, but all Stephen lived for was every time his lover stirred slightly. Some of the words out of Ryan’s mouth made little sense, but eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime, he opened his eyes again, recognition dawning as he stared up at Stephen.

Ditzy appeared at Stephen’s side and stared down at his commanding officer. “Hello, boss. Can you tell me your name?”

“Ryan, Captain, 25010643.” He sounded exhausted, but Stephen thought he detected a flash of amusement in his lover’s grey eyes.

“What day is it?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Ryan retorted.

Vicky squeaked with excitement and clutched at her father’s hand.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” asked Ditzy, just as Dr Yogasundrum and one of the nurses hurried back into the room.

“Dog, barking …” Ryan breathed, before his eyes fell shut again.

Stephen felt Greg Thornton clapping him on the back, then Amanda was hugging him and Vicky, and bending over to press a kiss into her ex-husband’s cheek and they were all laughing and crying at once.

A week later, Ryan was discharged from hospital. He’d been lucky, the doctors were certain that there had been no permanent damage. Lester arranged for a helicopter to fly both Ryan and Stephen up to the Lake District where they would take up the Thornton’s offer of the use of their guest cottage for as long as it took for Ryan to return to full fitness.

In his absence, Stringer and Lyle would run the field teams. Lester had assured the pair of them that the anomaly project would function perfectly well without them and, for once, Stephen had not been inclined to argue.

All he wanted to do was curl up in bed with his lover and hold him in his arms. And, after a light meal with Amanda, Greg and Vicky, that was exactly what he got to do.

Ryan snuggled close, his head resting in the hollow of Stephen’s shoulder. The bandages had come off his head before he’d left the hospital and Stephen had watched the blond hair start to grow again, already beginning to disguise the stitches. They held each other close and, before Ryan drifted into sleep, Stephen nuzzled at his short hair and murmured, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming back to me.”

In answer, Ryan nuzzled sleepily at one of Stephen’s nipples, causing it to harden immediately. Stephen tilted Ryan’s face up and kissed him very thoroughly indeed. He knew that the day might come when Ryan wasn’t able to come back to him, but for now he’d make the most of their time together.

However long that might be.


End file.
